Friday, September 28, 2007

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

Fjordman notes in an email:

“I keep thinking I have been focusing too much on the Marxists, and forgot about Big Business and the corporate interests behind mass immigration to the West. They have the money, and money makes the world go around, after all. The problem is that they treat countries as if they are corporations, and people as if they are commodities. They want us to import people as if they were toys or cheap toasters made in China. But people are not commodities, and countries are not corporations. It is a concept of capitalism that I cannot approve of, of reducing man to nothing but a worker and a consumer, homo economicus:”

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To reinforce his course correction to take into account Homo Corporatus, Fjordman uses a snip from from The Vanishing American blog. Here, Jerome Corsi is explaining why Jed Babbin kicked him off the masthead of contributors at Human Events (online e-zine)

I also tried to explain to Babbin my view that right now, the Republican Party is controlled by what used to be called the “Rockefeller Wing.”

Like David Rockefeller himself, the Rockefeller Wing involves millionaires and billionaires who run multi-national corporations.

Rockefeller Wing Republicans are already beyond borders in their determination to advance their multinational corporations for unbridled profit, whether or not U.S. sovereignty and the middle class are destroyed in the process.

I have reflected that Howard Phillips was probably right when he urged Ronald Reagan to form his own, new political party.

I’m not sure the moral Christians belong in the same party with the Rockefeller Republicans.

At any rate, George W. Bush in his second term seems determined to destroy the Reagan coalition once and for all.

[...]

We would be better off without a Republican Party if having a Republican Party means sovereignty under this false banner of one-sided trade agreements that have nothing to do with legitimate “free trade.”

This quote Fjordman uses highlights very well the fractures and fissions within the Republican Party. The Dems have their own quite different problems, mostly concerned with how far they want to go in copying Europe’s and the EU’s socialist policies and anti-war attitudes. But the Republicans are equally fractured.

Both parties have to deal with the reality that many — if not a majority — of Americans have begun to toss off their party ties, preferring to be known as conservatives or liberals, even while chafing at the broad-stroke definitions that these labels imply.

I disagree with Corsi’s statement above, about “moral Christians” vis-à-vis the Republican Party. There are many “moral Christians” to the left of me, though they tend toward the socialist “social justice” issues that so attracted me in my liberal youth. Liberation theology, which caught on in South America, grew out of the culture shock many European and North American Catholic priests encountered in their work in South America. Surrounded by a comfortable (and what seemed universal) affluence, they were staggered by the soul-numbing poverty they encountered — and which they proceeded to attempt to live while they were there. The passion of those priests in the front lines of this conflict was, unfortunately, not founded on any real understanding of economics. At most, in their seminary studies, they are introduced to a distorted version of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum.

A more encompassing view of Christian economics can be found at The Acton Institute which was founded to study religion and liberty. From liberty, “justice” follows; it is not the other way ‘round. The Institute has been responsible for the spread of the ideas of both Lord Acton (“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”) and of Frédéric Bastiat, a French Catholic economic philosopher who was much impressed by the deleterious effects of the Corn Laws on the English economy:

England (and other countries of Europe) suffered from protectionist trade policies in the first half of the nineteenth century. The British public was plundered by the mercantilist Corn Laws, which placed strict quotas on the importation of grain. By raising food prices, the laws benefited landowning political supporters of the government at the expense of consumers, especially the poor.

Bastiat’s work was interrupted by his early death, but his “Parable of the Broken Windows” is still used to illustrate the fallacy of some economic theories and to expose the problems of hidden costs. [Scroll down the link]

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I have wandered far afield from Fjordman’s original focus: the fact that large, multi-national corporations make bottom-line decisions that have world-wide repercussions. In his quote from Jerome Corsi, the important part for this discussion is this:- - - - - - - - -

Rockefeller Wing Republicans are already beyond borders in their determination to advance their multinational corporations for unbridled profit, whether or not U.S. sovereignty and the middle class are destroyed in the process.

Corsi has chosen to focus closely on the North American Union and for that he has suffered the wrath of Jed Babbin, the online editor of “Human Events”, who has indulged in some name-calling to make his point.. In fact, some of our commenters have taken Gatesof Vienna to task for what they describe as a “myth.”

If you google the words “North American Union nothing but a conspiracy theory” (without the quote marks) you can find any number of skeptical reports on this issue, though the hits on this phrase also contain links to pages which say it is to be taken seriously and is a part of the large global corporations' plan to improve profits and efficiency for themselves at a cost of sovereignty for the U.S. and Canada. Mexico is in many ways a failed state, full of corruption and lack of accountability, not to mention restless rebels who do on-going damage and disruption to the oil pipelines in their country.

And there are many Mexicans anxious to incorporate parts of the southwestern United States into Mexico territory, a fact which complicates our illegal alien problem. It’s akin to the Muslim concept of the Ummah, only this takeover is called Aztlan.

Of course, anyone who believes in Aztlan’s plans or the NAU is dismissed as seeing “Commies under the bed.” That quote, repeated derisively by the Left in the U.S. in the 1950’s, actually turned out to be true. There were active Communist cells in this country. When Soviet Russia imploded, these Marxists worked their way over to the Greens, dragging their outmoded theories along. Meanwhile, “Commies under the bed” has been dumped down the oubliette where inconvenient pieces of Leftist history are relegated. It beats ever having to admit they were wrong.

Fjordman’s corncern is spot on. We can be so busy looking at one problem that we forget to take in the bigger picture. There has never been a point in history where being informed in so many areas was so crucial. Whether it’s the hijacked climate issues with their faux science and charlatans who stand to make big money from people’s fears of the invented catastrophes, or the erosion of sovereignty all over the world, or the grasping mechanisms so apparent in Big Business — including Big Oil and the economic stupidities of the current alternate energy “resources” — we are in for a long haul.

And in America there are no political parties who are competent enough to handle any of these issues. Our political class is lazy, uninformed, and rapacious. Last year our Imperial Congress worked a total of 103 days, even as they voted themselves another raise and more benefits. These people may be our worst enemies and yet we have nothing better to replace them. Real leaders with integrity are absent from the scene and we end up settling for what we see as the least odious choice.

Batten down the hatches. We’re in for a long, stormy journey.

Meanwhile, stock up on some real economic and political theory. You could begin with Thomas Sowell.

5
comments:

Nice. Not that I was ever a card-carrying member of the Republican Party, but like the article says, I make a point of stressing that I'm a "Conservative" rather than a "Republican". I just don't buy into the Bush way of doing things. THe only exception would be defense, and even there we've drifted apart.

Unfortunately, when it comes to election day, I wind up voting against the Democrats, since they turned into the Clinton Party, with a platform which includes sexual assault, treason, socialism, etc. And I refuse to vote for that party ever again.

If there were a legitimate conservative party out there, I'd be interested. The best choice thus far seems to be Gingrich's "American Solutions" movement, which I just heard of yesterday. I need to do more study on it, but at least there seems to be a recognition there that things aren't working.

I like a lot of what Gingrich says (the religious stuff not so much), but he has way too much baggage. Not so much for me, since I know a lot of it is artificially created by the Clinton Party, but he's no longer electable, I think.

Someday, I'm gonna start my own religion, and follow up with my own political party. Then things in this country will be turned around, by gum!

A couple of days ago Fjordman made a post at Brussels Journal where he discussed if Eurabia was a conspiracy theory. I made several comments to that post. I am not sure if they influenced Fjordmans opinion in any way, but they are related to the problem discussed. Here are some of those comments:

"West now is the random collection of forces acting in different directions. each forse wants to use muslims for its own purpose. For example, minister for immigration wants more immigration, because he is paid for it. Chrystians support immigration because they hope that muslims will help them to hold against atheists. Atheists want to use muslims to destroy the remnants of Chrystianity. Companies want to increase their market, parties want to get new voters. Silly random forces are competing for muslims...I only want to say that everyone is doing his usual job, but using muslims as their object. They seem to have given up on gentile population..."

The essence of my position is not that there are some greedy people and evil elitists. West created the institutions, such as free market, social state and Empire (EU), which automatically search how to redistribute capitals and other resources and accept new people. Those institution according to their nature tend to seek people and use them as customers, consumers and citizens. When they found a new pool of people, not yet involved (muslims) they automatically tried to include them. We benefited from those institutions a lot, but now they went out of control. My point is that we must take control over them by political means, but not abolish at all or blame elites, which are just as silly as everyone else.

The lack of a self-defensive historical education among the post-Viet Nam generations, combined with a Business Uber Alles cupidity and stupidity, is brewing up a weakness in the face of a resurgent imperialism that leaves us fragmented as the enemy coalesces.

Look for a bloody century.

And, without stonger leaders -who understand that this is a global contest between the liberty-loving versus a totalitatian ideology- we have only inertia on our side.

And that will soon fade as the nuclear/chemical/biological balance tips toward parity, giving the theocratic manics (as they steal our weaponry technologies) the power to use the intimidating tactics that are working so well for them (in their current state of military weakness) with an apocalyptic promise behind them.

We need those who care passionately about the survival of our Civilization -which gave us anesthetics, antiseptics and atomic medicine and is expanding into the first tentative steps toward space travel- to rally their survival instincts and speak out honestly about the self-declared tyannical and intolerant aims of this retrograde and morbid ideology.

Fjordman and Dymphna are touching on an argument that I've made here on a few occasions, namely that globalization is right up there with pacifism among the Islamic supremacists' best friends.

They do take a different tack; while they are exploring multinational corporations, I have pointed out that the Internet and other pervasive global media have:

(1) had a corrosive effect on distinct national cultures by effectively erasing the natural and geographical barriers between them,

(2) made available to average people such a dizzying array of options in news, commerce, entertainment, sport and other cultural areas that the very idea of a shared, cohesive common culture even within those old borders is now a fading memory of a bygone era, and

(3) all but obviated the need for people to physically cross borders in order to interact, and therefore to be able to do damage to other national societies. (Islamic supremacists have, of course, exploited this to the hilt during their global jihad.)

Of course, it does occur to me that these two phenomena go hand-in-hand, in no small part because these same pervasive global media are controlled by multinationals themselves.

Unfortunately the time to confront these issues was during the 1990s, when the globalization of media was just beginning in earnest. Now they will be very hard to slow down and next to impossible to stop - much less roll back, which is what really needs to be done. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the fate of the West, and indeed the entire Westphalian world order, is already sealed.